


the dummy grenade

by gossamernotes



Category: Captain America (Comics), Captain America (Movies), Captain America - All Media Types, Marvel Cinematic Universe
Genre: Gen, M/M, another story because can't stop won't stop, lots of swearing
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-07-07
Updated: 2014-07-07
Packaged: 2018-02-07 20:06:51
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,270
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1912077
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gossamernotes/pseuds/gossamernotes
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sitting on a rotten log in the middle of nowhere Italy, Steve rests his legs after rescuing the boys of the 107th and not-so-secretly watches over Bucky.</p><p>That is, until the two of them finally have <em>that</em> talk about how Steve joined the army, and words are exchanged and secrets are shared. </p><p>And what is this story about Steve laying himself over an <em>actual</em> grenade?</p><p>[The story wherein Steve and Bucky finally talk after escaping the Hydra base and things don't go quite as planned.]</p>
            </blockquote>





	the dummy grenade

**Author's Note:**

> Guys. One day. I have been on this site for one day, and I have already written three stories. 
> 
> So, here is my third fanfiction ever, so please let me know if you all like it. It does mean a lot.
> 
> Constructive criticism makes my heart go boom, boom, boom. 
> 
> Enjoy!

As soon as Steve had dragged Bucky out of the debunked Hydra base -- still reeling because Bucky was _alive_ and the Schmidt had taken off his _face_ and wow, this is _war_ \-- Steve had to grip Bucky’s shoulders tightly when his best friend doubled over, choking and gagging on air. 

That had been hours ago, and now the troop have moved away from the base, commandeering a quiet village three miles south through heavy woods and slippery mud, but the folks there opened their homes willingly. Apparently, the ragtag company of the 107th were far more agreeable than any of the nosey Hydra workers that had passed through the town, and the locals were glad to see them gone. 

Steve can't help but agree with them. 

But he doesn't have the luxury to wait around any of the lowly lit campfires -- because even if the base had all but exploded, there could still be spies taking cover in the woods -- or sit next to any of the injured while they bite down on sticks as strangers sewed their cuts and pour watered-down whiskey on their scrapes. 

Steve doesn't have time because he is hurdling around camp, ordering groups to keep watch (and leave watch because some of these men were as stubborn as Bucky, and he _knew_ they would take three shifts of watch if they could) and handing out rations and sketching out the best routes back to camp because their ride wasn’t coming if his broken radio had anything to do with it. 

It is an amazing thing, really, the serum that Steve was injected with just a couple of months ago. Punching a poorly acted Hitler with a tacky, glued-on mustache and bench pressing cars during USO shows had given Steve an idea of what the serum could do, but as he runs across the camp, he is grateful that the serum keeps his alert and ready to move. 

He has no right -- none _at all_ \-- to slack on the job after seeing what these men had gone through in that hellhole. And as Steve heads to a makeshift tent towards the edge of camp, seeing Bucky nodding along as a man gestured grandly towards their campfire like he just invented fire, Steve feels his stomach twist. 

Bucky, he knows, went through more than most. And that doesn't sit well with Steve. 

But he can't stop, and so Steve spends hours rushing supplies around camp until light breaks over the hills ahead. Most of the men are sleeping save for those on watch, and even then, Steve knows that he is still needed to keep an eye out as well. 

Sitting down on a log near Bucky’s campsite, Steve undoes the straps of his dented helmet and groans softly when his knees crack. Sure, he is a stronger man now -- Erskine had promised those results -- but his muscles still ache and his head still throbs so he brings his fingers to pinch at the bridge of his nose. 

“S’bout time you sat down, Stevie.”

Steve jumps, nearly falling backwards over the rotting log, before turning to find Bucky’s bleary grey eyes trained on him. 

Shaking his head, Steve shrugs his shoulders. “I had things to do.” Bucky snorts before pushing himself off the ground, shaking his own head to dislodge some leaves from his matted hair and moves to sit next to Steve. The log, Steve had to admit, does an impressive job at holding their weight once Bucky takes a seat and knocks his smaller frame into Steve’s now-massive shoulders. 

"So, you joined the army, punk.” 

“Seems like it,” Steve answers, and for a moment, he wonders if Bucky is about to scuff him on the back of the head like he used to do when Steve had done something horribly stupid back in Brooklyn like try and jump over a fence or pick a fight on the playground with Jack Harrison. But Bucky keeps his hands to himself -- and Steve feels a pang of disappointment because it had been _so_ long since Bucky had touched him -- and wonders what would happen next. 

The silence between them stretches on as a handful of birds wake with the rising sun, chirping away for all the world like their isn't a goddamn world war waging around them. Steve stretches his arms above his head, cracking his neck to release some tension, and he can feel Bucky eyeing his hulking triceps.

“Yeah, they’re a bit bigger than they used to be,” Steve comments. Bucky jerks his head back and stifles a laugh.

“You’re damn right, Steve,” Bucky snorts as he eyes his friend, “what the hell did you do once I left? When the _fuck_ did this all happen?”

Steve blushes and brings a hand to worry at the back of his neck. “It might have been that night of the Expo. It might not have been.”

“ _Jesus Christ_ , Steve. I can’t leave you alone for five seconds before you start doing the dumbest shit. Just start from the beginning,” Bucky breathes, and Steve feels a tight knot in his chest loosen as he starts to tell Bucky the whole damn story. 

He tells Bucky about meeting Erskine in the recruitment office at the Expo and of the fear he felt when he thought they’d found out about his falsified documents. Moving onto to basic, Bucky snorts when Steve tells him about meeting Peggy and the way she knocked men to their knees because of _more_ than just her good looks. Steve tells him about Colonel Phillips and Howard Stark and Erskine’s murder -- and Steve has to shut his eyes at that to keep from crying and Bucky _knows_ so he just swung an arm around Steve’s shoulder -- and how he ended up in Europe after the USO shows. 

He tells Bucky how he wound up leading a rogue, one-man mission beyond enemy lines because he knew that Bucky wasn’t dead and refused to accept the Colonel’s condolence letter without a fight. 

Bucky keeps quiet through it all, listening patiently and humming under his breath or even laughing when Steve stumbled over his words. And, once Steve finishes, Bucky lets out a low whistle. 

“Remind me to _never, ever_ leave you alone again. Only you, Steve. Only you,” Bucky mutters as he run his dirt-covered fingers through his hair to keep the strands away of his face. Steve nods in agreement, fully aware of how absolutely crazy his story is, but he can't bring himself to regret a second of it. 

Because here he is, sitting on a forsaken rotting log in the middle of an Italian forest with his best friend -- and while the circumstances aren’t perfect and a lot of shit has happened to both of them -- they are both alive and breathing and that is _enough_ for right now.

Careful to not disturb anyone -- Bucky had warned him that Morita might have a coronary if he’s woken up -- Steve tries to put a smile on Bucky's face and tells him some more stories about his time in basic, pulling an exasperated smile onto both of their lips as he mentions unscrewing the flagpole at Camp Leigh to impress Peggy. But the smile is gone, unnoticed by Steve, once he mentions the dummy grenade. 

“...and everyone ran for it, Buck! Can you believe it? Some soldiers they were. I looked across camp and saw Peggy and ran right ahead, throwing my two-bit arms around that grenade and yelling for everyone to get back. I’m sure the Colonel must have been red in the face by then, but I passed the test. Not sure why they went that route; if that grenade had been live, _my_ body wasn’t going to cover any of that blast-”

“You are so fucking stupid sometimes that I can't even think straight.”

Steve stops and finally notices that Bucky is not laughing anymore, and if anything, looks more cross with Steve than he has been since they were little kids and Steve had eaten the last of Bucky’s jelly beans without asking first. 

Steve swallows, his throat bobbing with nerves. “Sorry?

Bucky bristles before honest to god punching Steve in the arm, and while Steve thinks that Bucky’s fist probably got the raw end of the deal here, he is keeps quiet when Bucky stares at Steve with narrowed eyes.

“It’s like you don’t even think about yourself, Steve. You never have. Goddammit, _this_ is why I didn’t want you here because you are just the kind of guy to jump on a _fucking live_ grenade. You know how insane that is, huh? Do you even get that,” Bucky spits, and Steve feels hot with anger and thins his lips. 

“Someone’s gotta’ do it, Buck. I told you, I got no less of a right to do what any other man does-”

“Bullshit, _I told you!_ You got something to prove to the world. I swear, you got the biggest fucking chip on your shoulder this side of anywhere-”

“It’s not that. I just gotta’ do what I think is right, Buck, so I do. If that means cutting a wire or covering a damn grenade, then so be it. It’s what I want-”

Bucky’s eyes snap to Steve’s, and for a moment, Steve feels like he’s been punched because he hasn’t seen those wild, glassy eyes since Bucky’s ma had died. They’d gotten nice and drunk the night after her funeral, and after Steve had crawled into bed, Bucky had followed and cradled his head in the crook of Steve’s shoulder before letting himself cry, clawing at Steve’s shirt for all the world’s cruelty because he _missed_ his ma and god, this _hurt_.

The look was back, and with a sickening wave of realization, Steve knew that the look was because of him. 

“What about what I want? Ever think of that? I don’t got many people back waiting for me, Steve, except you. And guess what? You ain’t even waiting back home for me anymore because you and your stubborn ass had to follow me to a goddamn war zone -- and I _swear_ \-- I will _fucking_ kill you if you die on me. I will kill you if jump on another grenade because I want us to walk back into Brooklyn together, you hear?”

Steve freezes, and Bucky charges on, suddenly loose-lipped and desperate in a way that makes Steve’s heart stutter. 

“Twenty years, Steve. Twenty _fucking_ years I have spent watching your back, and look at you,” Bucky gestures towards Steve’s solid build and strong hands, “You don’t need me anymore. What good am I now?” 

Bucky deflates, worn out from the outburst -- and Steve wants nothing more than to tell Bucky to go back to bed or eat some rations but they need to settle this now -- so Steve places a hand on Bucky’s knee and grips it tightly.

“Jerk.”

Bucky starts, but Steve stops him with a soft look, tapping a finger against Bucky’s kneecap. 

“I’m never not going to need you, Buck, so let that go to that big head of yours. So, don’t worry about that, okay?”

Nodding shortly, Bucky keeps his mouth closed as Steve presses on. 

“I can’t promise you that this is going to end how we want it to, Buck. We’re soldiers now, not some brats running down Brooklyn alleyways. I’m not saying that I am going to jump over every grenade I see from now on,” Steve breathes and ignores the wide-eyed look that Bucky is giving him, “but I _will_ do it if I _have_ to. I need you to understand that.”

Clearing his throat, Buck dips his head towards his chest. “Can’t say I understand that fucking complex of yours, Steve -- sure as hell will never accept it either -- but alright.”

“Alright?”

“Yeah, punk, _alright_. We’ll take this...whole thing one day at a time; it’s been a while. There are some things we need to make up for now,” Bucky replies, and while Steve is grateful that Bucky is dropping it, he knows this argument is far from over. He knows it just like he knows Bucky is about two seconds from passing out from exhaustion and that the curled smile on his friend’s lip is quivering just so with unchecked frustration, but Steve can let that slide. 

For now, he stands and pulls Bucky up by the shoulders before steering him back towards his leafy bed of dirt and pushes him to the floor to get some sleep. And Steve knows how tired Bucky must be because his friend doesn’t fight Steve and insist that he’s fine to stay away. 

Bring his eyes to the hills on the horizon, Steve can see that the sun is up -- and judging by what's left of his cracked watch -- Steve knows that the troops have about four hours before they need to start marching for the day, but Bucky needs sleep. So Steve sits back on the log, keeping watch over Bucky like Bucky had done for him on all those nights when Steve was too sick to speak and feverish to drink, and Steve closes his eyes for a moment when a breeze brushes past his cheeks. 

In that moment, he could have been in Central Park back home, and the nostalgia feels nice until a muffled voice calls out to Steve from beside him.

“You still with me, punk,” Bucky asks, half asleep but still with a teasing lilt that is so originally Bucky that Steve can’t help but smile.

“Yeah, Buck, ‘til the end of the line.”

**Author's Note:**

> Follow and fangirl with me on [tumblr](http://brooklynboystosupersoldiers.tumblr.com) because I love you all.
> 
> Disclaimer: I do not own any characters, settings, plot lines, concepts, or terminology as created, used, and owned by Marvel Entertainment, LLC ®. This is a work of fanfiction.


End file.
